


Only the Brave Dies Young

by Goldenflame



Category: Another Life (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bernie is a caring guy, Episode: s01e10 Hello, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Multi, Neopronouns, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychological Torture, Unhealthy connection, happy ending for most people, the Achaia’s implant can contact the Artifact, they finally come back to Earth, this is neither relationship nor friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28448868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldenflame/pseuds/Goldenflame
Summary: The Achaia’s implant forcibly took control when Sasha tried to strangle Zayn.
Relationships: August Catawnee/Oliver Sokolov/Javier Almanzar (mentioned), Bernie Martinez/Zayn Petrossian, The Achaia’s implant & Sasha Harrison
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think I just get trapped by the visual Narcissus things. The connection between the Achaia’s implant and Sasha is neither relationship nor friendship, but they do share some and it’s attractive to me and I want to explore it more. I began to seriously think about them all because Harper in the same episode said ‘The Achaia do not abandon their friends’, so I had a deep thought about it, and I’m done.

Sasha creates a seemingly dilemma for Bernie: kill him, or Zayn gets strangled to death.

 _Don’t you fucking do this,_ _do_ _n’t you fucking do this-_

 ** **“I’m not listening to you anymore!”**** Sasha yells in the direction where no one is.

“Sasha, we could work this out!”

****“No we can’t!”** **

Bernie stares at Sasha nervously. There is immense madness and despair in those wide-open eyes.

Not long ago, he saw Sasha cry. Until now, there are still undried tears on his face.

Bernie didn't know what that parasite did in Sasha's head. He only watched Sasha struggling with pain. It looked like he might even break the bands of the recliner. His heart felt sad when Sasha emitted painful cries, but there’s nothing he could do. And during the silent period after that, Sasha panted, tears slipped silently from his closed eyes. He shook his head, whispering some negative replies to himself. Bernie could feel the soreness leaking from Sasha's heavy breathing. Bernie is very good at having fun, no setbacks can really trap him for too long. Sometimes the world is not so satisfying, but he keeps going, because even fairy tales are not always rose all the way. Although Bernie's resilience towards frustration and pressure is as good as his appetite, he can't help cursing that there have been way too many accidents along this outer space journey.

Sasha is already crushed by straws. Zayn can't even make a whimper. Bernie don't know how long it has been. Ten seconds? One minute? He hesitates for a second, and Zayn is a step closer to death. Bernie lifts his gun and points it at Sasha's face.

“Please don’t let me do this.”

The implant knows it has to do something. The Achaia put enough patience with humans, and so did the implant. Sasha's intuitive impression of it still remains on that intangible mental projection in red, but it has recently been tired of continuing to play a nice guy in front of a loser. It enjoys watching the images of Artifacts releasing infrasound waves or thermonuclear weapons to slaughter local creatures, but as one of the executors, it also values spiritual penetration, the invisible weapon. This method of invasion takes a little longer, though, it can maximize the rate of resource acquisition. But now it seems that the Achaia's tolerance has spoiled the human beings.

Before witnessing humans pay the price for their arrogance, first, it needs to capture its naughty pet who wants to escape.

 ****“Do** ******it, you coward!** ** ****”** **

You’ve tried, Bernie. It’s okay. This is exactly what Sasha wants. Give him relief. Bernie looks at Sasha, who is squinting and gritting his teeth, feeling determination filling his chest. He holds his gun steady and pulls the trigger with his index finger. The sound of core charging rings.

Sasha sways and falls straight to the ground.

Before the beam flies out the muzzle and hits the ceiling of the Airlock, leaving a charred hole.

Zayn lands heavily. Ze desperately inhales and coughs badly, struggling to get rid of fingers grabbing hir neck. August covers her mouth with hands. Bernie is stunned like a statue, with his gun pointing upward. He raised the muzzle at the last moment, which luckily prevented everyone from being directly exposed to the outer space. Bernie slowly puts it down, and unblinkingly stares at the convulsive man on the ground. Lying on his side, Sasha looks exactly like Petra infected with boron-based virus, who soon became a haunting nightmare for all the waking crews. Foam gushes from his mouth, his joints tapping the floor as his body twitches, making a similar sound of the evening bell.

After a while, the bell stops with convulsion. His body goes limp and lies motionless.

The silence around them is astounding. August sobs quietly. Zayn's gasp is clearly audible.

"The shot missed." Bernie finally says.

“Is he alive?” August's voice trembles.

Zayn reaches out to the recliner trying to stand up. “Here. Let me help.” Bernie recovers and carefully steps over Sasha's body to offer a hand, noticing the distinct red fingerprint on hir neck. Zayn turns to glance at Sasha while catching hir breath.

"I-I don't know what happened. He-" Bernie stammers, when the medic draws hir arm from his support, weakly but firmly pushing him aside. Ze kneels and moves to Sasha's side, then stops at a not too far distance, putting hir fingers on his side neck. After a few seconds, ze nods lightly.

Bernie holds Zayn's shoulders in gentle moves, feeling the unconscious tremble of hir body. "Come on, I'll take you out first."

August went back to her room to rest. Bernie, Zayn, and Beauchamp and William who came afterwards stand outside the Airlock observing the three-dimensional image of Sasha’s brain and the implant on the screen. He is tied back to the recliner. Zayn has already laid the recliner flat and tilted his head to one side to prevent suffocation.

"I checked his body." Zayn's voice is still hoarse. Ze looks down at the tablet computer in one hand, pressing hir collar with the other. "He suffered from extensive intracranial hemorrhage and cerebral cortex damage. The electrical activity of his cerebral cortex is completely undetectable. However, his cerebellum and brainstem function normally. I have also given corresponding treatments for the symptoms of intracranial hypertension." Ze looks up and says in a conclusive tone: " His life is not in danger for the time being. But in addition to his basic physiological functions, he has lost the ability to be aware of himself and the external environment, and," Zayn looks at Bernie who looks a little worried. "probably would never wake up."

Great, now we have one more patient in deep coma. Javier outside, Sasha inside.

They all have a thoughtful expression. Bernie looks back at Sasha who is in a coma in the Airlock. Fortunately, this time he didn't need to kill another person himself.

Zayn pauses and continues: "I think it has something to do with the implant in his brain."

"Isn't even the implant controlling him now?" Beauchamp, who was silent for a long time, suddenly interjects.

Zayn glances at the screen again. " Can't be sure for now. At least the apparatus doesn’t detect any signal."

"So Sasha is now in a state of house empty?"

No one laughs. Beauchamp raises his eyebrow. He makes a wry mouth, then also begins to mimic William's pensive look.

"So, do we have any solutions?" Bernie askes.

“I don't know.” Zayn shakes hir head and sighs. "We know almost nothing about the structure of the Achaia’s implant. If it is taken out hastily, the best result is the status quo, and the worst, is death."

William drops his hand against his jaw. "If he is still inside, I can try to pair his nerve through the soma tube-"

"No," Beauchamp and Zayn deny almost simultaneously. They glance at each other, and Beauchamp continues: "That's too risky. And we can't afford it ****again****."

“And it’s also dangerous to put a person with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome in the systematic tube.” Zayn adds.

“-provided that you want me to do so.” William lowers his head. Bernie looks around. "Hey, buddy, listen to me." He rushes in, but hesitates when he is about to say the next sentence. "Dude, do you think that …this is the best result for us right now?" He frowns slightly and stares at the screen in front of them. "I mean, we no longer have to be threatened by him and this parasite, and Sasha is not controlled, don’t have to endure torture, nor does he need to care about what we think of him. "He is not interrupted. "Why should we deal with him so eagerly? The conditions on the earth are much better than they are now. We can study him after we return to Earth. Maybe we can also find a way to wake Javier."

“Fifty-fifty.” Beauchamp shrugs, casually making a comment to avoid possible embarrassment.

“Easier said than done.” Zayn sorts out the data at hand. "But let's wait for Niko and Cas to return before making a decision."

"Why don't we fix the hole in the ceiling of the Airlock first?" William suggests and smiles.


	2. Chapter 2

Dark.

That's normal. Its true body lurks beneath Sasha's skull.

But now this situation looks different. It detects that it had a crash for 1 hour and 12 minutes not long ago, and an offline body. It moves its limbs- only feels four, propping up its body from a certain plane.

The "other self" it presents in front of Sasha is just a realistic mental projection. The implant is on an inconspicuous branch of the Achaia's technology tree. It is notorious for its extensive interstellar application, but it is still an insurmountable peak for human civilization. Most of the time it is just a cold bystander. It can "feel" Sasha's feeling, far more advanced than those so-called VR systems, but it is still _it_ , the Achaia’s first pawn against mankind. It should have eight main limbs, which would extend indefinitely like the Droste effect if observed directly by humans’ naked eyes, instead of damn only four of finite length.

Now it feels it _is_ Sasha Harrison.

This restricted feeling only occurs in two situations. One, it is manipulating Sasha's body; the other, it has been imprisoned in some way. Except for those not-in-use soma tubes, none of areas for human activities are absolutely dark on the Salvare. The human visual system should have captured a few rays of light at least. So it judges that the latter case is the explanation.

Its body is still in Sasha's head, judging by the fact that it is still wearing Sasha Harrison. It has also read the memories of Javier and Beauchamp, and it can change into the appearance set for them at any time as long as it wants. Sasha is not that special.

This place is so dark that it can't even see its own hands. The temperature feels comfortable for this projection form, although it suspects there has any gas here. And as no sharp drop in the surrounding temperature was detected neither, it’s not hard to dope out that its host is alive, at least his body is.

According to the original plan, it should have successfully taken control of Sasha's body, utilized Zayn to block a possible shoot, then grabbed Bernie's gun and shot the three humans in the way. After that, it would personally carry out every step of destroying the Salvare, to make up for the mistakes it committed for trusting this weak pathetic human too much.

However, the reason for this present situation, although as it would never admit, is that it underestimated the degree of stubbornness of this walnut kernel, which has been clearly studied from the inside to the outside. Sasha, a self-pitying coward, actually endured the pain of brain melting, until the remains were no longer enough to support the operation of the entire body and shut down automatically. It was also implicated when infiltrating Sasha's mind, thanks to the damn overly tenacious vitality of mankind.

It huffs. Sasha Harrison. You always make the wrong decisions.

A reminder comes that the connection with its body is successfully re-established. Its original functions are activated by 83% and the percent is increasing. _Area scan start_ _ed_ _._ It waits with patience. At first, nothing comes into view apart from the heavy darkness. But gradually, a silver-white landform outline forms in front of it. There is a giant spatial fault with rugged and uneven edges, as if torn apart abruptly by external forces. Large polymorphic fragments are suspended in the air, reminding it of the remains of planets bombed by the Artifacts.

Now his brain is really glue.

A few seconds of fighting in the mental battlefield was enough to destroy 11.3% of the cerebral cortex. When it melted Sasha's brain, it did not consider itself trapped in Sasha’s mind as one of the future possibilities. The degeneration and necrosis of a large number of neurons is like an earthquake that created many thought faults. Some memories, just like disconnected carriages, are permanently lost from the main body of the consciousness train. These dark areas around are the mind space after the collapse. However, this place formed by the concretization of thinking, no matter how many twists and turns there are, always has entrances and exits. And the guiding star is thought itself.

This was originally Sasha's memory. There always be a default existence in his memory: Sasha himself. Now it is locked in this vessel because the mind space takes this projection of Sasha as the default value.

It gazes into the endless distance. Unfortunately, there is nothing here for it to rely on the fulcrum of the body. It has an obvious habit: In addition to putting its hands in its pockets as a relaxed posture, it always likes to lean on something or gets close when talking to Sasha, which is probably a manifestation of the characteristic that it, as a parasite, always needs to adhere to something, although it can control almost any system that functions like a brain. As long as the real Sasha Harrison, the original default value, is retrieved, it will no longer be firmly grasped by this space, theoretically. Its true body has made a backup of Sasha's brain. If combined with sufficient energy and material, and extensive connections developed over the past few weeks, it will only be a matter of time before everything is restored to its original state.

And, modestly considering something like a guest must do as his host does, the memory space of a human seems to allow only one default value to exist at the same time, which suggests that the projection and Sasha may be mutually exclusive.

In summary, the answer is already here: the hippocampus, where human brains store recent memories. Only aboard the Salvare can both of them exist separately.

Bernie visits the infirmary a lot these days, not just because Zayn stays there often. He seems to care about Sasha, or that weird alien parasite in his head.

Out of sensibility, as Bernie’s lover, Zayn is willing to believe that Bernie has learned his lesson and saves him some face; out of reason, ze knows that ze should call Bernie to stop, "You remember that your curiosity almost killed us twice, right?"

"Of course, I haven't, I can't. But I also can't leave him like this.” Bernie waves at Sasha. "He is our companion."

"He _was_. Now, he is only _your_ companion." Zayn cocks surprise eyebrows at Bernie’s upset eyes. Ze opens hir mouth and shakes hir head hopelessly, forcing herself to look up at him. "Those who we have lost or injured are also our companions, our _friends_. He deprived others of their rights to live, and in exchange he lost his right to be forgiven. I am helping him now only out of my professionalism and my research needs, rather than thinking about some nostalgia that no longer exists."

Ze stops paying attention to Bernie, turns and walks to the side console to check some data. But gradually, ze shows a surprised expression. Bernie leans over and sees a bunch of fluctuating numbers on the screen, with Sasha Harrison's name displayed in the upper left corner. "What happened to him?"

"There are electrical activities in his cerebral cortex." Zayn stares at the screen, quickly tapping the keyboard with both hands, and another interface showing Sasha’s brain and the implant is called up. "It's impossible. His brain shows signs of self-repair. Human medicine has not yet overcome the problem of neuron regeneration." Zayn is finally willing to turn his attention to Bernie. "It's the implant. We have to notify William."

It stands still on the spot, eyes gleaming with wathet glimmer. Lights are growing in here, like the dawning on the earth.


End file.
